


The Heart Is a Caged Bird

by joycecarolnotes



Category: Silicon Valley (TV)
Genre: Canon Dialogue, Feelings!, Fix-It of Sorts, M/M, Season/Series 06
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-05
Updated: 2019-12-05
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:33:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21683794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joycecarolnotes/pseuds/joycecarolnotes
Summary: Jared knew that his love could be a poison. That getting close to someone meant exposing them to the worst, most toxic aspects of himself. He'd pushed people away before, and it ached to think of doing the same with Richard, but it was a sacrifice he had to make, he knew, for both of them.Or: Episodes 1-4 of Season 6, If the Show Actually Cared About Exploring Jared's Feelings
Relationships: Jared Dunn/Richard Hendricks
Comments: 35
Kudos: 119





	The Heart Is a Caged Bird

**Author's Note:**

> With immeasurable thanks to a_bit_not_good_yeah, who pulled this fic out of me the way Russ Hanneman did to Richard with the new internet, and who deserves a very large financial stake in it.

NOW

 _This is all your fault_ , Jared thinks, not for the first time. An unpleasant thought, but with a certain comfort in its well-worn familiarity. _You insisted_ , Jared tells himself, _that Richard was making the right choice and supported his blackmailing Colin—a feeble, pigeon-hearted, pitiful excuse to work closely again with your captain, when you knew all along it was wrong. You've insisted, all this time, vaingloriously, rapaciously, on being close to Richard when you_ knew _that the nearer you got, the more you opened up to each other, the more inevitably you would sully him._

It is not the first time a selfish act of Jared's damaged Richard's reputation. There were the fake users: a lapse in judgment Jared himself was never appropriately blamed or punished for; the trap his need to feel like someone's bro had walked them into at Branscomb Ventures; there was the way he played along, feigning ignorance as Richard broke the law at HooliCon; and now, this debacle with Colin and Gates of Galoo, the dark path Jared's desperate desire to be close to Richard again had led them down.

_Tsk, tsk, Donald. This simply will not do._

It was foolish, Jared thinks, to believe things could go back to the way they were before if only he and Richard remained purely professional. That he could put his feelings back into the lockbox where he usually kept them, after Richard had gone and pried it open and looked in.

Jared knows that his love can be a poison. A burden. That getting close to someone means exposing them to the worst, most toxic aspects of himself. He's pushed people away before, many times over, urging them to a safe distance before the grenade that is his love for them goes off. And it aches, it aches, to think of doing the same with Richard, but it is a sacrifice he has to make, he knows, for both of them. 

Jared's tried his best to love correctly. To love appropriately. Never to love too much. He knows that his love can be unorthodox, off-putting. He's watched others wilt under the ferocity of his affection, the way a plant over-watered will eventually succumb to rot. He hadn't meant to be that way with Richard. He never should've allowed himself to let Richard get so close. Now, Jared resolves, he'll extricate himself from this terrible entanglement. He won't hang around to watch any more of Richard's precious leaves fall off.

The resignation note he writes is terse but professional; the conversation with Richard that follows is stilted, unnatural, and strained. 

"Pied Piper isn't the same company I signed up for," Jared says, trying his best to stay calm, polite, and measured. "She has different needs now. And so do you. And," though the words taste bitter on his tongue, though expressing his own needs feels well-nigh impossible, Jared says, "it turns out, so do I."

Richard calls him a turncoat, a backstabber, a buddyfucker. "Well, fuck me, Jared. I don't want to _encumber_ you," he says, bitterly, his ego wounded. "Go to your new boss. I hope she's not as big of a fuck-up as I am," and Jared hates that he has to hurt him, but he'll do it if that's what it takes. If Richard's hurt is the price of protecting him, of severing their dangerous connection.

 _This is it_ , Jared thinks, as he exits Richard's office. _Never again will you straighten his collar. Never again will you steep his tea. Never again will you turn down his thermostat_.

Richard won't even let him do it one last time. "I want it warm," he says, spitefully.

 _This is for the best_ , Jared tells himself, after, weeping near-silently in the front seat of his car. _Without Richard, you can make yourself invulnerable. Go back to not speaking your feelings. Without you, Richard is kept safe_.

When he leaves, Richard watches from a conference room window. This is for the best, too; Jared doesn't want to hear anything he might have to say. He thinks of the early days, when Richard would walk out of the room while Jared was in the middle of a sentence. This is what he misses, this is what he craves. He runs away to the comfort of someone who hardly acknowledges him.

THEN

The trouble was, everything was going well.

He had nearly everything he wanted. For the first time, maybe, well, ever.

Jared was absolutely over the sun, moon, and for that matter, all of the stars in the night sky to've been promoted to Pied Piper's Chief Operating Officer. To know Richard placed that sort of trust in him: it was a gift he could never repay, and an honor that would've been his dearest dream if only he'd allowed himself to imagine it. The Seppen situation had resolved in a manner benefiting both parties, and Jared could go back to using his bread machine without that nagging feeling of guilt. Jared's friend, captain, and CEO Richard Hendricks had even—if woefully briefly—been his houseguest. It was too good, far too good, far too much like something straight out of Jared's most clandestine, desperate fantasies. _This simply can not be_ , he told himself each night, making up his sofa bed with Richard, watching nature documentaries with Richard on his couch.

Things were even going well—rare and tenuous as that seemed—at Pied Piper. The company was opening a new, multi-story office space in a building that had once belonged to Hooli, to Gavin. "It's over," Richard gloated when he signed the lease. His mouth tipped up into a one-sided, devilish smile. "We won."

The trouble was, Jared still didn't feel much like celebrating. While everyone else reveled in their company's success, Jared busied himself waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the price of his joy to be high and cruel and terrible, for these new riches and treasures to be swiftly taken from him. 

It was so hard—always—to feel worthy of celebration, that he'd earned his share of victory, that he deserved to be a part of other people's happiness. Either, Jared told himself, he hadn't done enough, or what he'd done he did for the wrong reasons, or enjoying himself was indulgent and decadent, something meant for people who weren't him. And so, as an office party raged on the floors below, Jared retreated to his desk, his lamp the sole island of light in the otherwise darkened wing of the office. The muffled throb of electronic dance music pulsed through the floorboards. Voices in the distance hooted and hollered. Jared had a glass of flat sparkling water and a cozy mystery novel: this was all the celebration he required.

He startled when a voice said, "hey! I thought I might find you here."

Jared touched his throat and smoothed down his hair, as if he'd been caught doing something untoward. He swallowed thickly and said, "Richard."

Richard sauntered up, swaying on his feet a little. He hiked himself up with the heels of his hands and perched on the edge of Jared's desk, so close their legs were almost touching. "What's up?"

"Oh." Jared looked down almost shamefully at the Rita Mae Brown novel in his hands, tucked his bookmark neatly inside, and closed it. "Just catching up on some reading. My book club meets next week."

Richard smiled down at him fondly, and with an air of conspiracy: a look Jared knew far too well. It was a look that said something like _we're in this together_ , or _us against them_ , or even, dare he let himself think it, _you're mine and I'm yours_. It was a look Richard gave him more and more often these days, and Jared let himself get lost in it. In the flecks of various colors that dotted Richard's otherwise-blue eyes. The sounds of the party felt a universe away, like this was any other night when they found themselves the last two still working in the office, like they could very well be the last two men on earth.

Richard broke his gaze. He snatched a pen from the cup on Jared's desk, and clicked it open and closed idly. "Do you wanna like, ah. Do a crossword or something?"

"Richard," Jared cautioned, clicking his tongue. "You're missing the party."

"I hate parties. You know that." _Click,_ the pen went, _click_. 

"Yes, but you're the guest of honor." Jared tried his best to sound grave and serious, to shoo Richard away, back to the people who deserved to bask in their magnanimous captain's presence—the valiant, selfless thing to do, he thought, even as an ugly voice inside him crowed, _everyone wants Richard Hendricks, and you get him all to yourself_. "They'll wonder where you've gone," he said. "Please don't let me keep you."

Jared knew that he could be clingy, that he could be needy, that his feelings were so often all-consuming and too much. He'd tried, again and again, to practice emotional abstinence with Richard, but Richard always, somehow, seemed to claw Jared back in. Even here, his playful pose atop the desk, the coquettish way he tempted Jared with the promise of alone time, how he seemed to sense exactly what Jared desired—to feel wanted, to feel useful, to feel chosen, to feel in on a secret—and indulged him in it. Jared felt his face go hot at the thought.

"Come on," said Richard, "I'd rather be here with you."

NOW

The first day on a new job, Jared rises extra early. _An early bird_ , he thinks, _time to catch the proverbial worm!_ He brews a cup of earl grey tea, scans the morning's tech news, and gives himself an encouraging yet realistic pep talk in the mirror.

"You are needed," he says. "Donald, you are needed. You are needed. But not too much."

Shaved, dressed, and showered, Jared sits down in his crafting nook to draft each of the three letters he writes to himself whenever he starts a new position. First, and to the point, his personal action plan. This piece is easy enough: his plan, from this day forward, is to support and protect Gwart and by extension, her fledgling company. His resignation note is next. More of a form letter, really. Its purpose, after all, isn't to imagine how a good thing might sour, but to remind himself that even the best ones must end: a sort of business development professional's memento mori. It is a ritual that brings him back to center, that reminds him of his priorities. 

The hardest bit—a letter to his forty year old self—Jared saves for last.

He'll make more tea first. Check in on his virtual refugees in PeaceFare. Catch up on Laura Erickson's _For the Birds_ podcast, and then on her latest blog entries.Anything to put this particular letter off.

 _Come on, now_ , he thinks. _Enough dilly-dallying. You're postponing the inevitable, Donald._

Picking up his pen to write, Jared wills himself not to recall the last time he performed this particular ritual, when his dreams of the future revolved around Richard Hendricks and Jared's desire to be needed and wanted by him. He sees, now, how that led them both to ruin. This time, Jared promises himself, he'll dream of different, less dangerous things.

_Lordy lordy, look who's forty!_

_From that toolshed in Central PA to the biggest companies in Palo Alto, your life has been an unexpected journey, Donald._

_It's okay that you've made your work your life, although that sometimes cost you friendships and intimacy. Although the formidable brood you once dreamt of having never quite materialized, and you never did find that pretty birdie to share your humble, cozy nest. You were able to determine exactly what you wanted from your career and go after it, even when it meant taking a step back and scaling down. Even when it meant walking away on the precipice of victory. Even when it meant great emotional sacrifice. If that isn't a mark of true maturity then I hardly know what is!_

_You helped shepherd Gwart's company to success, and even if she never acknowledged or thanked you for it, you knew deep down that she valued all the work you did. You always knew, too, the importance of hard work for the sake of it—not for the spoils and the thank you's it might bring._

_You are a selfless man, Donald, and you never took more than you deserved, never asked for a thing others weren't willing to give you. You put everyone else first, even when that meant denying yourself access to them. And maybe you'll never make it to Malta. Maybe you'll never run with the bulls, or check the splendid Antioquia Brushfinch off your life list. No matter. That vibrant, flashy, brummagem life was never the right color on you. You're a true winter, Donald._

_Best,_

_Jared_

THEN 

"Heh." Richard chuckled, breathy and hot, as he leaned over Jared's shoulder and filled the last square in their collaborative puzzle. A-S-T-A. "Is it just me," he said, "or is _asta_ in every fucking crossword?"

"It's not just you," said Jared.

Richard pushed the newspaper aside and resumed his perch on Jared's desk. Somehow, he was closer than he'd been before. His leg nudged against Jared's, and Jared blushed furiously at the contact.

"I've missed this," Richard said. "You and me, man. Like the good old days."

It was true. Jared's role as COO, and Richard's recent ventures into the public eye, had them too often separated; it'd been some time since they had collaborated like this. 

Jared thought of them back at the incubator, before Erlich disappeared and Jian-Yang took over. He thought of sleeping in the garage at night—the thin mattress of his cot, the cold cement floor, the scuttling of rodents—and of how wonderfully happy he'd been there. He missed it all terribly, too. Even the bad times, even the heartbreak. Even the times he feared they'd never make it here, that he had assuredly failed Richard in his roles as both head of business development and friend.

Somehow, they'd made it. All the way here. And now they were dancing on Hooli's grave.

"You know," Richard said, in the sort of voice he used for the secrets he confided only in Jared, the sort of voice that set off an almost Pavlovian deluge of excitement and trepidation and lust. "I used to be so afraid of this. Afraid the second I had the chance I'd turn into Gavin fucking Belson."

"But you never did."

Richard scoffed. "Only because of you."

Jared felt himself flush, his face and neck go hot. He deflected the compliment eagerly, with a wave of his large, pale hand. "You should give yourself more credit," he said, almost playfully, "silly. Gavin had me, too, you know."

"But not - I mean." Richard searched Jared with his eyes. Looked him over carefully. Considered him. He stuck out his tongue and licked his lips. "Not like this. Not the way we have, like. Each other. Jesus christ, Jared," he said, the irony apparently lost on him, "he didn't even know your name."

"I like Jared better anyway."

Richard smiled. "Yeah. Me too."

Jared wasn't sure how to feel about this new side of Richard. This warm, effusive, exultant person: it was a part of Richard he'd never had the chance to see before. _Maybe_ , he thought, _this is Richard when he's happy. Maybe this is Richard when he's gotten exactly what he wants_.

"Is this what you dreamed of," he asked, "for Pied Piper? Back when she was just a dinghy? My esteemed captain, are you pleased with where we've anchored our ship?"

Both of them paused and took in their surroundings: this elegant, glass-walled office, the indoor water feature in the corner, far too ostentatious for Jared, who if he had his way would still be working at a meager, standalone, wobbly desk, bringing his own laptop to work everyday. Neither of them had ever been the sort to care about the trappings of success; hard work, they both felt, was its own reward.

"Honestly? I just - I wanted to be different. I don't, uh - I still don't know what that means exactly. I don't know if this is it."

"Is there something else you want?"

"I don't, uh." Richard swallowed. He leaned in towards Jared. Reached down and placed his hand upon his wrist. "I think that we should just, like," Richard said, and then he kissed him.

NOW

Gwart doesn't speak to Jared. 

Gwart doesn't look at Jared. 

Gwart hardly seems to notice when Jared is in the room.

She never thanks him for his work, or asks directly for his input. He isn't even sure she's learned his name. And this—the way they remain unknowable ciphers to each other—this is precisely what he craves.

Gwart is helpless, and in this respect, she is perfect for Jared. He can take care of her in whatever way he pleases, and trust that she will not expect anything more from him. He doesn't need to worry about burdening her with his baggage if he never lets her carry any of it, doesn't need to fear poisoning her with intimacy if she maintains no feelings towards him at all. 

Gwart is more like one of the American Girl dolls she plays with than she is like a person, to Jared.

He brings her Yoo-hoo and raw artichokes and all the mayonnaise she desires, and feeds her gummy vitamins when he gets concerned about her lack of adequate mineral intake. He reads to her from _Anne of Green Gables_ during her naps mid-codesprint, tucks her into bed at night under her weighted blanket, in her extra-large ThunderShirt, and positions her sun lamp each afternoon for optimal vitamin D absorption. 

Nights, Jared sleeps in the garage sometimes. It's barely changed since his days at Pied Piper, and he can almost imagine he's back there again. That it's Erlich, Dinesh, and Gilfoyle in the next room, not Big Head and Jian-Yang and whichever "friends of friends" they're hosting. That this place is still where he belongs. His hearth and his home, just like it was then.

Jared sleeps on the floor, happily, waiting to leap at the first call of distress from Gwart. The rats are back in force, and they are his constant companions.

"This is enough," Jared whispers to himself, hugging his body to retain warmth, his vest thrown over him like a blanket, as he curls up on the concrete floor one night. "Asking for more has only ever brought trouble. You have everything you could ever need."

THEN

Richard kissed like he was dying and Jared was his dying wish.

He kissed like years of fevered, galvanic tension had led them to this moment, because—Jared supposed—they had.

Richard's palm sweat against Jared's cheek; he moved his lips a lot; his mouth was sweet and warm; he tasted of expensive whiskey. He made hungry, carnal, borderline-obscene sounds that made Jared feel like he was about to be devoured, and he would have willingly, gladly, offered himself as a sacrifice.

Jared felt his body react: a heat in his chest, tightening below his waistband. Proof, he thought, of how reckless he'd been, of how terribly he'd wanted this. 

His base desire, his craven lust, for Richard wasn't something he could reason his way out of. There was no workflow methodology, no cost-benefit analysis, no SWOT board that could tell him what to do with it. He couldn't detach, the way he could with his feelings. His desire was alive inside him. It was a force he could not control.

Jared stood up from his chair. He put his hands on Richard's slender waist, pressed his body again his, and kissed his captain back.

The natural order, Jared thought, must have shifted. Lightning struck. A great earthquake knocked the building off its foundations. He wondered if the world could be coming to its end, if this all could be a hallucination: the party, the crossword, the kiss, Richard himself, sweet, beautiful Richard, his clammy palm, his modest waist, his mobile lips, the suggestion of whiskey on them, brilliant, wonderful Richard, who somehow, unfathomably, wanted to be here with _Jared_ , who wanted to kiss _Jared_ , in spite of everything. 

_Is this heaven_ , Jared wondered. Was he asleep? Or dying? Or dead?

He'd spent so long dwelling in his fantasies of this moment, he'd never stopped to consider them actually becoming real. Never stopped to think how it might actually feel, how he might actually react, if Richard Hendricks ever actually kissed him. Even the merest thought of it felt terribly vain and presumptuous. Now that it was actually happening, Jared wasn't quite sure what to feel.

 _You should be so happy_ , he thought. _This is everything you wanted. You're Richard's COO, his friend, his trusted confidant, and now you could be his lover. How dare you—you traitorous ingrate—how dare you even_ question _how magical this is_.

Richard pulled back. He laughed a little against Jared's ear, and the hairs on the back of Jared's neck stood in rapt attention. "Finally," Richard breathed, and it was so happy and relieved and so—frighteningly— _loving_. Jared saw their future together: the baggage he'd burden Richard with, the destruction he'd inevitably bring. Instead of the joy he should have felt, Jared only panicked.

It was something about him, maybe: some inherent roadblock that kept Donald ‘Jared' Dunn from the realisation of his desires, an invisible force field that sprung up between him and whatever it was he wanted most. The belief he could never deserve it, coupled with the conviction that the things he wanted would forever be tainted if he had them. _Finally_ , he thought, _finally_ , a word he wouldn't dare speak, so loaded with entitlement and presumption. As if Richard had always been meant to be his.

Jared placed his hands on Richard's delicate shoulders and tenderly yet forcefully, he pushed his captain away.

NOW

Richard's myopia must be without limit. How dare he show up here on the hostel doorstep, in disregard for Jared's best efforts to move on. The sight of him makes Jared feel all hot and sick and twisted up inside, like someone's tied a transom knot inside his stomach. Still, even now, he can't bring himself to turn Richard away without the courtesy of a conversation, and invites him, instead, to sit down in the backyard. Jared even allows himself a moment of foolish indulgence, fetching Richard a mug of hot tea and a crocheted blanket that he wraps around his shoulders like the papal mozzetta.

 _Here you go again, Donald_. _Not good_ , he thinks. _Not good._ He notices Richard's collar is rumpled, and resists a searing urge to straighten it. An urge to lean in close to the delicious woodsy scent, the coal furnace warmth, of Richard.

"I know your job changed over time," Richard offers, "but we can undo that. Restructure your role, move you upstairs so you're closer to me. Whatever it takes to make it work." And then, perhaps because he knows that Jared likes this, that Jared longs for this, that Jared goes hopelessly weak-kneed at the mere _suggestion_ that he might be a part of something, something with _Richard_ most of all, he adds, "we'll be a pair of boys again. Back in business."

Jared takes a breath. Steels himself. He issues a stern internal reminder that Richard is no longer his captain, that he must not let himself be swayed from his current course, that being a pair of _anything_ with _anyone_ brings nothing but ruin and mess and disaster. 

"It's too late," he says. "I mean, you let me go. So I took the job here with Gwart."

Gwart, who doesn't want to be anything to Jared.

"Let you go? Fuck. I was trying to give you what you wanted."

"Richard, I - " 

"Come on. Let's be - I can be"—Richard swallows nervously, _gulp_ —"let's work together again. Just go inside and tell Gwart you're leaving."

And maybe Jared only says it because he knows how Richard values loyalty; it is, after all, one of the things Jared loves about him most. He knows it will wound Richard, and saying it feels like digging his fingers into a bruise:

"That's not how loyalty works." 

Richard scoffs. His face goes pinched and red with anger, just the way Jared wants it, and then he's throwing their history together, the job Richard gave him, the promotion to COO, spitefully back in Jared's face. "Now," Richard spits, "when I need you the most"— _need you_ , Jared thinks, helplessly, _need you need you need you_ —"you stab me in the back, and then you have the balls to lecture me about loyalty? Are you fucking kidding me? I was right. You are a buddyfucker."

Something about that word is worse than almost anything else Richard could call him. He can hardly stomach its cruelty, the way it taunts him with his desire for Richard. _‘You kissed me back'_ , he thinks, _‘I felt it.' ‘Because you look at me like that.'_

"Please stop saying that," he begs.

"Buddyfucker."

"Stop saying that!" Jared shouts. "And please leave this house, or I can't be held responsible for my behavior." He throws up his hands and heads for the safety of the hostel, of its familiarity, of escape from the wild, dangerous emotions Richard's taunting is making him feel. Richard, undaunted, nips along after him. "What are you gonna do," he says, and the words cut into Jared like knives. "You gonna buddyfuck me? Cause that's what you do to your buddies now, Jared, isn't it?"

"Get out!" 

It is then that they see her. Gwart in her floor-chair, under her sun lamp, her laptop in her lap. This—his future face-to-face with his past—is more than Jared can handle. This is why he hadn't invited Richard inside. 

"Oh. My. God." Richard's mouth gapes, incredulous. " _This_ is Gwart? _This_ is who you're walking away for?"

"Richard," Jared pleads, "don't."

"Jesus, Jared, she won't even look at you."

Richard turns his ire to Gwart, bends over to yell in her innocent, undeserving face, gesturing wildly toward Jared. "Look at him! Fucking look at him!" He doesn't understand that being looked at, being _seen_ , is exactly what Jared is running away from. "You know what? You know what, _Gwart_?" He says her name like it's invective. "You don't _deserve_ Jared. Shit. I don't deserve Jared. Nobody on this fucking _planet_ deserves Jared. But if _somebody_ gets to have him, it shouldn't be some - some - some - " 

"Richard, no."

"Some googly-eyed, chocolate-milk-drinking, frizzy-haired, spastic code freak who won't even acknowledge he exists." Richard throws his hands up. He exhales a mean little laugh. "I need you to fucking look at him."

They shout over each other:

"Look at him! Look at Jared! Look at him!" 

"No, no, no, no, no!" 

Jian-Yang stumbles into the room, half-dressed and bed-headed with his air rifle, roused from sleep by the chaos in the workroom. Before he can think better of it, operating on blind rage and self-loathing and his years of firearms training at the boys' camp, Jared wrests the rifle from Jian-Yang and aims it directly at Richard. _If you hurt him,_ Jared thinks, _you can hurt the part of yourself that loves him. If you hurt him, you can make certain he never wants to see you again. If you hurt him, you can remove a real relationship as an option. If you hurt him, you can go back to being invulnerable and unseen. If you hurt him, you can be free of this._

Jared lets the rage boil inside him. He lets it bubble over, where usually he shoves it back down. He chases after Richard. Kicks violently through the bathroom door. "You did this, Richard!" Jared shouts, and when he shoots Richard, he feels it in his own heart. 

THEN

Richard's lower lip wobbled. Jared wanted to run away from him; he didn't think that he could stand to watch him cry.

"I'm sorry," he managed to say, "Richard, I can't."

"But - but." Richard pouted. He kicked out with one slender, twitchy leg: a small, inconsequential protest. "I thought you'd _want_ this. Because you, you know. Because you…"

"Because I?"

"Because - because of the way that you are! About me!" The words exploded with great violence from Richard's chest. "Because, you know. You love me, or whatever. Because you look at me like… that."

Jared reached up instinctively to touch his face, to wipe away its foolish, revealing expression. He tried to rearrange his mouth into a frown. He felt awfully exposed and vulnerable, like Richard had reached inside him, pried open his ribs, and looked upon his most dangerous desires. Jared burned with shame at the thought of how obvious he must have been, that he'd let his want for Richard show on his face, that for all he knew everyone had seen it. How dissolute, how lecherous he'd been!

It was one thing to harbor a crush. Something hopeless and unspoken. To keep his feelings for Richard inside, where they couldn't do the damage spoken feelings were wont to do. It was one thing to idly fantasize, to admire from a distance, to long for something he knew he'd never have. It was entirely another to have the way he felt noticed and acknowledged. Entirely another to confront the possibility of an actual relationship. Entirely another to have his feelings potentially _returned_. 

_Because you love me,_ Richard had said, like it was a foregone conclusion, like he'd known the secret all along, like he'd seen the forbidden part of Jared's heart and liked what he saw there. Worst of all, he'd said it like he could love Jared back.

But Jared didn't deserve a nice cup of tea; how could he ever deserve Richard?

"Richard," Jared began, tentatively. He'd hesitated to broach this subject, but this felt like the perfect time. Whatever he had, any argument he could make, he had to use it to drive Richard from him. "Tracy approached me," he said, "with some questions about the nature of our relationship. Do you have my condo listed as your permanent address? And me as your emergency contact and a beneficiary on your life insurance policy?"

"Yeah." Richard shrugged. "So what?"

Jared shook his head. He tried to tell himself that it didn't mean anything. That the things that meant _home_ and _family_ and _permanence_ to him simply didn't hold the same dramatic significance for Richard. That he would always take his friendships—his relationships of all stripes—more seriously than the people on the other side of them did. _What if I just moved in here_ , Richard had thrown out, so casually, over checkers one night back at the condo, and Jared hated himself for how much it meant to him. For how badly he wanted it. For how willing he was to play along, to be closer to Richard, regardless of what destruction it wrought. Richard, maybe, hadn't really meant it. They hadn't talked about it again.

"Those are things you should do with a partner." 

"But we _are_ partners! I mean. You're always saying that."

"You're my boss."

"So? We - I - our - our company. I wanted to be - different. We - we're not like that."

Jared sighed. "Richard," he said, in despair and warning, and the caution was for himself just as much as it was for his captain. He had to be vigilant, to remind himself not to get caught up in these feelings, that he would only poison Richard, that intimacy with him was not a thing Jared got to have. "I'm not what you want," he said.

Richard looked down at the floor. His damp eyes gleamed in the low, warm lamplight. His voice was small and aching when he said, "but what if you _are_? Jared? What if you're actually like, the only thing I've ever known for sure I wanted?"

"Richard - "

"You kissed me back. I felt it."

"Richard - "

"Is this about your past? Because I know it's, uh - but you don't have to, like - I'm not some delicate flower."

 _Oh but you are_ , Jared thought. _My delicate flower. My yellow-billed kingfisher. My luminous Alpha Cassiopeiae. I can not be the one to ruin you_. 

"You should really get back to the party," Jared said instead, and as Richard stalked away from his desk, he called out to him, "we can still work together, you know. Nothing has to change."

Richard scoffed. "Right. Sure. Yeah."

But both of them knew this would change everything.

NOW

With Richard gone, Jared stumbles in a daze to the garage. He collapses against the locked door, slides to his hands and knees on concrete, and sobs so hard he nearly makes himself vomit. _Oh Donald, what have you done_ , he thinks. _You let Richard in. You let yourself_ feel _things, too strongly again, and look at the damage you did. You are every wrathful, violent man you've ever known; you are no better than any of them._

The next morning, Jared calls the police. He tries to turn himself in for assault or perhaps take out a restraining order. Without Richard's consent, it seems he can do neither. And so he finds himself, again, at Richard's mercy: only Richard has the power to punish Jared the way that he truly deserves. 

Time passes, and Jared almost adjusts to his new life, almost accepts that he's been successful, that he's hurt Richard badly enough this time that he will never hear from him again. It should feel good, he thinks. It should feel liberating. He should be glad to be unencumbered, to dedicate himself to Gwart in peace, safe from the threat of true intimacy, free of the burden of his love. 

A part of Jared is grateful. A part of him misses Richard. A part of him wishes that, at least, Richard cared enough to hurt him back.

When Richard finally does take his revenge, though, he does it in the cruelest way possible: instead of revenge against Jared, Richard claims his vengeance on innocent, delicate Gwart.

"Special occasion," Jian-Yang says one morning, as he lights a cigarette and kicks back in his chair in the workroom. "You bring the police to this house, so I sell Gwart's company to Gavin Belson."

"I'm sorry." Jared frowns, befuddled. "Gavin is interested in... Gwart's company?"

"Yes. Richard told him about her. Told him Gwart is very sexy. Now, Gavin says he wants to shut you down."

"Richard - Richard did this?" 

This is a degree of petty and vengeful he hadn't anticipated even petty, vengeful Richard sinking to.

Jared looks around the room. His and Gwart's workstations are already being disassembled. Everything they worked on transferred over to Gavin Belson, who will toss it away like so much refuse. He thinks, achingly, of all the time he's spent here: the triumphs and disasters, the celebrations and defeats. The burning check and all it represented. He thinks, too, of returning to find the place stripped, of watching Fiona savagely torn to pieces. The way the things that Jared loves always seem to be dismantled as he helplessly looks on.

"This is an incubator, and you are not an incubee. You take your things, and leave," Jian-Yang orders, pointing towards the doorway.

 _Richard did this_ , Jared thinks, despairingly, out on the doorstep. _No, no, Donald,_ you _did this_. _This is all your fault, again._

Gwart would still have her company if not for him. If his troublesome connection with Richard hadn't spilled over into his new life, if he'd managed to destroy or outrun it. If he could only leave the ruin he caused in the past. If he could devote himself to another, fresh and clean and guileless. If only Richard didn't dig his claws in and hang onto Jared as tightly, as suffocatingly, as he could.

Gwart sees it, too: the destruction he's brought down upon her. She is so angry with him, she won't eat her 3:17 snack.

THEN

After the party, Richard mostly avoided him, and Jared supposed that was for the best. He tried to tell himself that this was what he wanted, that it was why he'd rejected Richard in the first place: to sever their ruinous connection. But still, it hurt when Richard went to Holden for help instead of him, when Richard hired a professional do his nails, when he walked away in the middle of the toast Jared had prepared for him, when Tracy told him unceremoniously that he was no longer needed near Richard's office.

Without Richard, without supporting Richard, working at Pied Piper simply wasn't the same. It felt less like the life Jared had wished for himself, the thing he'd chased after when he'd chased after brilliant Richard Hendricks.

Jared found himself listless during conference calls. Flippant and impatient when employees came to him with questions. Letting the quality of his work degrade. Failing to meet his own standards.

He glanced at his phone, distracting himself during what should have been an important biz dev meeting. Someone prattled on about developer contracts and indemnification clauses—topics that used to get Jared all worked up—but now, he could hardly bring himself to pay attention. He'd changed his lockscreen recently from a newer picture of himself and Richard, to one of them together back when Pied Piper was first getting off the ground. When it was still a fledgling compression app based in Erlich's Hacker Hostel. When he and Richard were barely more than strangers, and Richard still forgot he was around or to invite him places. Before Richard had acknowledged his feelings, said the things they dared not speak aloud, and tore down the careful house of cards they'd built. Jared missed those days something awful. With a cavernous, ravenous ache.

The photograph brought him some comfort. Then he looked up from it to see Richard—actual, real Richard—waving to him from outside the conference room.

What was Richard doing in the Hamelin Wing? He had to be looking for Jared. Jared let himself enjoy the gratification for a moment, knowing Richard sought his attention, and when Richard asked him to step away for a private, one-on-one chat, Jared leapt at the chance, however foolish. What he found was that Richard wanted his seal of approval on a plan to blackmail one of Pied Piper's developers. His horror at Richard's questionable morals was matched only by his delight in knowing Richard still couldn't go through with a plan like this without him.

"What are you suggesting here," Jared asked, "blackmail? We're supposed to be the virtuous ones, and this is just plain wrong."

"Yeah. Okay. I guess - I guess you're right. I'll think of something else. I mean, he started it, but. Yeah." Richard twitched in the doorway. He looked on the verge of leaving, and Jared was desperate to make him stay.

"Richard," he said, "did Tracy happen to talk to you about moving my office down here?"

"Yeah, she mentioned it. I approved it." 

"Oh, you did?" Of course, thought Jared, of course after what happened between them, Richard wanted to stay away from him. He tried his best not to look upset, to nod amenably and agree, "okay then."

That could have been the end of the conversation. Jared could have done the right thing and let Richard go, accepted the necessary distance from him. He could've reminded himself that he was the one who created this estrangement in the first place, and that he'd done it for all the right reasons, that he'd done it for Richard's own good. Instead, Jared found himself searching his brain for anything he could say that would help keep Richard close to him. Anything that would potentially get them back on the same page. He would encourage any plan of Richard's, no matter how dubious, how illegal, how amoral, in this moment, if it got him another minute alone in this conference room with Richard. If it let him indulge the fantasy that they could still work together, just like old times, that nothing between them had to change.

"Richard?" Jared called, against his better judgment.

"Yeah?"

"I mean, Colin lied to you about collecting data first, right? So, even if this is wrong, I suppose you could argue that it is wrong in the service of rightness."

A cruel voice in his head said, _this isn't going to make him keep you around, Donald_. _This won't get you back into his good graces._ It had seen the darkest, cobwebbed corners of his soul and knew his need to be needed for what it really was: a means to gratify his own ego.

"Yeah," Richard agreed, "it's unethical in the defense of ethics. Unjust in the quest for justice." And then, because he always knew exactly what to say to keep Jared on his leash, tethered: "Monica, Dinesh, Gilfoyle, everyone else... they're all just perfectly content with letting this guy shit all over everything we believe in. But are we, Jared? Are we?"

 _Gosh_. Jared went woozy at the thought of being a _we_ with Richard again—Butch Cassidy and his Chief Operating Officer—even if it was only for tonight.

"Richard," he said, "let's go put a foot in Colin's ass."

NOW

There is only one way to save Gwart's company, and it will mean returning to Pied Piper. It will mean confronting his feelings for Richard head on, testing himself to see if this estrangement holds up in the face of physical closeness. 

"I'll do it," Jared says, "so long as it's clear I'm doing this for Gwart and not for Richard."

"Sure, yeah," Monica says flippantly. "But we need to do this _now_."

"I'm on my way."

Jared will not let his feelings hamper things this time. He will erect a physical barrier if he has to, between himself and Richard, between himself and his tendency to let his emotions carry him away. Ed Chambers, Jared's old fictional supervisor, would never—to borrow Ed's parlance—"catch feelings." _What would Ed do_ , Jared asks himself, _what would Ed wear_ , as he stops at Stanford Shopping Center and picks out a pair of aviator sunglasses. He checks himself out in the window of his car. _Oh heck yes_ , he thinks, this is the look of someone cool, of someone free and unencumbered. Someone dramatically different from the person Jared Dunn of Pied Piper was.

All day he hides behind them and his plan, for the most part, works. Jared makes it clear that he is here for Gwart, not Richard. He defends himself when Richard chastises the team about their looming deadline. He doesn't let Richard boss him around, second-guess, or give directions. And when Richard suggests, in the car, that they talk over the way things have been between them, Jared turns on _Fresh Air with Terry Gross_ and drowns out whatever hogwash Richard has to say.

 _You're doing it, Donald_ , he tells himself. _You're actually playing it cool_.

Jared makes it through the day, through all of the alone time, through working together again, in close quarters and confined spaces, with Richard. He keeps his emotions and desires in check. It isn't until they're on the precipice of victory, on the verge of buying Hooli—a miraculous thing Jared never would've thought possible—that his feelings begin to betray him. 

"The Hooli charter," Gavin proclaims, "which I wrote, gives me the right to block this transaction."

"Uh no," Monica says. "It doesn't."

"You had two hours," Richard adds, "which lapsed - "

Before he can think better of it, Jared checks his watch. "Seven minutes ago," he chirps, excitedly. He can't help but smile, the way he would have back when he and Richard were on the same team, and he sees Richard notice, the hungry way Richard's eyes consider him. He sees Richard lick his lips and remembers the heat of his mouth.

Almost as quickly, Jared reminds himself he isn't meant to smile now. He isn't meant to get excited. He isn't meant to let the terrible gravity of the red giant star that is Richard Hendricks pull him in. Jared rearranges his face into a blank expression, grateful for the sunglasses that hide the emotion in his eyes.

The deal closes. Pied Piped owns Hooli. And, if Richard sticks to his promises—an awfully big _if_ , Jared thinks—he and Gwart are free to own their company again.

"So, I guess everyone got what they wanted," Jared says, almost mournfully, on his way out the office door. The victory feels hollow and empty, when he can't celebrate it with the rest of the team. But, he knows, he must return straight to Gwart, must not let Richard keep him. Must not let himself give in to his calamitous desire for proximity.

Here, alone in the room with Richard, on the high of such an overwhelming conquest, Jared's attraction toward Richard is as strong as it's ever been. He knows, he thinks, how it must have felt to be Brendan Bracken—close confidant to Sir Winston Churchill—on VE Day.

"Well actually," Richard says, chasing after Jared, "Jared? I just wanna say, like, I'm really sorry. About everything," and _everything_ , between them, includes so much. "I never should've, like, uh. And, of - of course, I'd be happy to give you and Gwart your company back. That's obvious. And also, if you needed office space, we'd be happy to have you. If you still wanted to work... together. Um I guess, I don't know. This would all feel better if we could like, share it. I just - I don't know. I - I miss you, man."

"Whatever," Jared forces himself to say, through the looming threat of tears, "I don't care."

He wishes it was true. It isn't.

It is so strange, so frightening, so wonderful, to think that he is _missed_.

"If you ever wanna come back, just. Just say so. Alright?"

Jared turns away before he or Richard can say more. Before his feelings can betray him any further. He's tried his best to cut out his love for Richard, done everything it took, with surgical precision, but the feelings are still there—in the lump in his throat, the ache in his chest, the tear that slides down his cheek below his sunglasses—gnawing at him like a phantom limb.

He thinks he may never be free of them. 

THEN

 _Donald, what have you done_? _What have you done_? Jared berated himself, on his drive home from the office. He had let his desire to be close to Richard, and to be needed by him, turn him into some sort of craven, amoral yes man, and led them down a terrible path.

"This, Richard, this!" Jared had cried with delight, the two of them alone in Colin's office—"a pair of boys" again, as Richard said—positively rejoicing in the fact that they'd just blackmailed one of their key developers. The very man who'd once saved their necks from the fifty-one percent attack by YaoNet. _Goodness_ , thought Jared, _what a chiseler, an extortionist, a no-good, common thug you've become! And to think that you dragged Richard down with you!_

The operation had gone off, it seemed, exactly according to plan—even down to their matching outfits and scripted, well-rehearsed clever jibes—and they'd sent Colin to his board meeting with his tail between his legs, off to amend his company's bylaws and ensure that Gates of Galoo never violated its users' sacred trust again. 

The old Jared would have wanted, in that moment, to touch Richard. To seal their triumph with a hug, or even—if he let himself be brazen enough to desire it—to kiss him. Instead, still desperate for some sort of shared physical catharsis, Jared picked up one of Colin's buxom anime girl figurines, and broke her head clean off.

Jared's joy was woefully short-lived, though, and not just because of the guilt he felt at decapitating poor Rangiku Matsumoto, who had done nothing to deserve it other than being on the wrong desk at the wrong time.

Richard glanced at his phone. "Our Uber's almost here," he said.

"You know," said Jared, feeling almost bashful to extend the invitation, knowing full-well what happened last time they'd tried to celebrate together in the office. "There's a couple of beers back at the office with our names on them. ‘Cause when I put them in the fridge, I put our names on them."

"Sure. Yeah." Richard smiled, easy and carefree. "We've earned it."

But no sooner had Richard accepted his invitation then they discovered what was really going on at Colin's board meeting. Colin was planning to use Richard's algorithm to turn Gates of Galoo into the most sophisticated and extensive data collection platform in history: the precise opposite of everything they'd worked for, of everything Richard valued, of everything he'd promised to the world.

And even worse, thought Jared, he had been telling himself through this whole misadventure that success—success, and his own proximity to Richard—would justify the immorality of their behavior.

 _This is all your fault_ , thought Jared. _You insisted_ _that Richard was making the right choice and supported his blackmailing Colin—a feeble, pigeon-hearted, pitiful excuse to work closely again with your captain, when you knew all along it was wrong._

It wasn't nearly enough to end his and Richard's emotional entanglement. 

It wasn't safe for Richard to have Jared anywhere near him.

They wouldn't be able to work together at all.

NOW

When Gwart fires him, by text message no less, Jared doesn't know what to do with himself. It's been so long since he's been without a CEO, someone to devote his days and his nights to, a sun for him to steadily revolve around. Of course, he thinks, the obvious answer is to go back to Pied Piper. Richard's made it clear that he is welcome, that he isn't starting a search for a new COO, that Jared's old job is waiting for him, should he ever decide to return to it. That he is wanted, even, that he is missed. 

Jared's heart is like a caged bird, and Richard holds the key to his prison. He's left the door wide open, but Jared is afraid to take flight.

Why, Jared wonders, has he rejected everyone who's ever offered him safe harbor? It must have started when he was only a child: his birth parents first, and each subsequent foster family after that. What had he done, consciously or unconsciously, to push away every last one of them? Even later in life, he's rejected potential partner after partner, CEO after CEO, always moving on to the next thing whenever his relationships threaten to become too close or intimate. Whenever he feels in danger of being truly seen.

Desperate in his longing for answers, Jared does something he never thought he'd do, and looks up his real birth parents.

He's known they are alive for some time now. That the man he once believed to be his biological father was no more than a grifter and a fraud. But he didn't think he could stand to be betrayed like that again, and so he never tried to contact them. Not until now.

He'll ask them why, he thinks. How he had communicated, even as a baby, that he wanted nothing to do with them. What he did to push them away.

"Well, there's not a whole lot to the story," Jared's father—his name is Stuart; he has a large nose, like Jared's—tells him. "Once you came along, Susan and I realized the timing wasn't right, and we needed to give you up."

"I appreciate how difficult that must've been for you guys," Jared says, diplomatically.

"One of the hardest decisions we ever had to make."

"Um, thank you," Jared says, as Susan hands him a cup of tea. He takes a sip. It's lukewarm, left to steep for too long, and with entirely too much sugar. But he'll drink every drop of it, he knows; he will be nothing if not polite. "I just want you to know that I understand and that I don't hold it against you."

"Yeah," says Stuart. "It just got way too difficult for us."

"Understood." Jared looks down at the table in front of him. A sweet family photo, posed out on their lovely porch: Susan and Stuart and their three adult children. He feels happy for them, for the secure, stable life he facilitated by simply never being a part of it. "You had kids after me," he says.

Where the conversation goes from there is too cruel to be worth repeating.

In a life full of coldness, and full of rejection, it is the most coldly rejected Jared's ever felt.

NOW

Jared drives home in a daze. To the incubator first, as if on autopilot. Then, he course-corrects to his condo. He thinks he may have stopped and talked to Bighead, but he doesn't remember a single word he said.

"Richard," he asks, confused, hastily drying his eyes on his sleeve as he fumbles for the keys to his condo. "What're you doing here?"

Richard clambers up from his position slumped against the hallway wall, a pile of curls in a green hooded sweatshirt. He sounds exhausted, as if the journey from the floor to his feet knocked the wind entirely out of him. "Honestly? I came here to like, confront you? About whether you still had feelings for me? And if you wanted to come back to Pied Piper? But then Bighead called and said something about your real parents and like, that you were, uh, installing solar panels at their house? Whatever that means. I don't know. It's Bighead. But he said you seemed upset. And now I, uh - now I don't want to do any of that."

"Do you want to come inside?"

They're barely through the door before Jared collapses on the sofa. Against all of his instincts, he fails to put up a protest when Richard offers, kindly, to make him a cup of tea. Jared watches as Richard puts the kettle on, locates Jared's mugs and tea and almond milk without asking, perfectly at home in Jared's kitchen. And when he takes a sip of the tea that Richard makes, it tastes exactly as he likes it.

"So uh," Richard says, sitting down next to him on the sofa. "What happened? With, ah - with your parents?"

Jared frowns. He imagines Richard, sinking into despair beside him, into the inky bleakness of his past. He can't put dear, sweet, brilliant Richard through that. He has to say no, to protect Richard from it. It is the most reliable way he knows to show that he cares about him. "Oh Richard," he says. "You don't want to hear that."

"I do, I do," Richard protests. "I mean, obviously I don't, like, _want_ to hear about bad shit happening to you. But I want to know about it. Because I, like. You know." Richard punches Jared gently on the shoulder. "I care about you, man."

"But you… you never want to hear my childhood things. I can tell it makes you uncomfortable. I'm sorry. Sometimes they just slip out."

Jared didn't mean to share. He knew it was terribly selfish to take other people's time up with his personal history, to assume they would care enough to hear about it. Better to keep it to yourself, he thinks. Better to protect everyone from it. But if your entire past is off limits, how can you ever be yourself? How can you let yourself be seen, or known, by anyone? It's that sort of terrible logic that got Jared into this situation in the first place. It's that sort of terrible logic that he wants to begin to outgrow.

"Look, I know," Richard says, "that I'll probably suck at all that stuff. Like supporting you, or whatever. But fuck it. I can't prove I suck if you won't even let me try."

It makes Jared smile a little. So he tells him.

"I know I must have done something," he says, "even subconsciously, to reject them. Why else on earth would they keep their three other children, but not me?"

"Jesus fucking christ." Richard slams his mug down too hard on the tabletop, the Hummel figurines startle, and Jared nearly jumps out of his skin. "You were a - you were a little kid. A fucking newborn _baby_. And they threw you away like a piece of trash, and for what? To streamline their fucking… first class air travel? No. No. Fuck these people. They sound like pieces of shit. Give me their fucking address. I'll fucking swat them. Come on, I know you wrote it in your little address book."

"Richard, yes, but no. And that's not funny. I've been swatted. In the bathtub. More than once."

"Fine, fine." Richard sighs. "But you didn't, uh - look, Jared - honestly? You don't need these assholes in your life. You, like. You know. You already have a family."

Jared's brow furrows. "I do?" 

Richard shrugs. "Yeah. Me. Here. Us," he replies, so matter-of-fact, as if he hasn't just rearranged Jared's entire universe. 

"Oh Richard." Jared doesn't know what else to say, what could possibly convey the depth of gratitude and warmth and intimacy he feels, and how for once he isn't frightened of it, so instead he lays his head on Richard's thigh. He tastes salt and finds, somewhat to his surprise, that he is crying. 

"Don't," Richard says, as if on instinct. He wipes the tears from Jared's cheeks with the cuff of his sweatshirt, gently. "Or, do. Do cry. I don't know. If you like, need to."

"I'm sorry." Jared doesn't mean to be laying his feelings bare like this, to be making Richard so uncomfortable. "It's just. It's been a lot of loss."

"I know, baby. I mean, uh - shit, that just slipped out." 

"It's okay. I liked it."

They stay there together, in silence, for a while. Richard's fingers find their way to Jared's hair.

"Richard," Jared asks, his voice a murmur, his mouth pressed into Richard's leg. "Would you stay over again, just for tonight? You can have the bed of course. I don't want to be alone right now."

"No, I - "

Jared sits up. He feels resignation settle over him, a grey and poisonous fog. He sighs, his shoulders drop, he feels so terribly defeated. And worse still, so meekly accepting of it, so prepared to believe that he deserves it, so brutally accustomed to defeat. "No, right, of course," he says, because he deserves no better. Of course he would—he _should_ —be rejected, now, by Richard. This is it, at last: the punishment he waited for. "Tsk tsk, Donald," he scolds himself, "so selfish. Expecting your captain to alter his routine on your behalf!" An awful moment passes in which he wants badly to strike himself.

"No, no, I'll stay, I'll stay," Richard hurriedly promises. He reaches out to grab Jared's wrist. His hand is warm. And it is only when Richard holds him still that Jared realizes quite how badly he'd been shaking. "What I meant was, ah. You sleep in your bed."

"Oh, please," Jared chuckles, "don't be silly. Richard, you need your beauty rest! I couldn't put you out on the sofa."

"With me," Richard amends. "If you want to. You sleep in your bed with me."

THEN

The first time he came to the hostel, Jared barely made it through the door. He handed Richard a bottle of champagne, told him he admired what he was doing at Pied Piper, and left in a hurry under threat of violence.

The second time he came to the hostel, Richard had called and invited him. Jared quit his job at Hooli that day. Even then, he longed to be close to Richard, near enough to his beauty and genius to touch. 

It was never easy. It was terrifying, sometimes. But the longer Jared spent in that house and with its inhabitants, the more of himself he let them see. 

Over time, the house became his home. The people in it, his family. 

NOW

"Remember," Jared says, "when Gavin asked you what you would do if you ever became as big as Hooli? If you'd seek out your competitors and help them?"

Richard nods. "Uh huh."

"Well, you know. That's exactly what you did. With him and with me and with Gwart, too."

"Fucking Gwart." Richard rolls away from Jared, to the other side of the mattress. He throws a forearm dramatically across his eyes, shielding them from the bright morning sunlight. "Let's never say her name again."

"Richard," Jared cautions.

"Sorry, sorry."

"It's alright." Jared slides across the bed. He wraps a long arm around Richard and says, "I only meant, I don't think you have to worry anymore about becoming Gavin Belson."

Richard threads his fingers through Jared's, raises his hand to his mouth, and kisses it. "Fuck. I really, really missed you." He looks at the clock on Jared's nightstand and groans. He burrows his face into his pillow. "I don't want to go," he says, his voice muffled. "Your bed is so comfortable."

"What if you stayed," Jared says.


End file.
